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Reprinted from The Annals of the American Academy of PoKtical and Social 

Science, Philadelphia, July, 1917. 

Publication No. 1129. 

THE RIGHTS OF SMALL NATIONS IN AMERICA '^ f,lr 

THE REPUBLICS OF THE CARIBBEAN 

By Oswald Garrison Villard, 

President of the New York Evening Post Company. 

In his recent address to Congress, which led to the declaration 
of war against Germany, Woodrow Wilson declared that 
peace must be planted upon the tested foimdations of political liberty. We 
have no selfish ends to serve. We desire no conquest, no dominion. We seek 
no indemnities for ourselves, no material compensation for sacrifices we shall 
freely make. We are but one of the champions of the rights of mankind. We 
shaU be satisfied when those rights have been made as secure as the faith and 
freedom of nations can make them. 

With these sentiments as a declaration of national policy, every 
American must agree, whatever may be his feelings as to the present 
war and the necessity thereof. For the hne of conduct the Presi- 
dent has thus laid down in these beautiful phrases is the one which 
the United States should surely follow in all its dealings with any of 
the nations with which we are brought into contact. They are par- 
ticularly apropos at this time, when we are entering into closer and 
closer relations in deahng with the republics to the south of us. 
Just because they are so weak as compared with our own giant 
strength it is necessary that we should base our policy towards 
them upon the highest ethical and moral standards, coupled with 
true unselfishness and without any thoughts as to personal profit 
for the United States because of our philanthropic action. 

The very highmindedness of this statement of Mr. Wilson's 
makes this an opportune moment to inquire whether in our dealings 
with certain islands in the West Indies we are maintaining his stand- 
ards and ideals. It makes it possible for me to enter a plea before 
you for the need of an even more detailed declaration of American 
policy than this towards those repubhcs in the Caribbean whose 
governments are now under American military control. Cuba, 
Panama, Nicaragua, Haiti and San Domingo are today under Amer- 
ican tutelage or controlled by governments upheld by American 
bayonets. But I shall deal in this paper only with the situation in 
the sister republics of Haiti and San Domingo. Of these, the latter, 
after an independent existence as a republic of seventy-two years, 

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:2 The Annals of the American Academy 

has been taken over by force by our government; while of the inde- 
pendent government of Haiti — a negro republic of 112 years' stand- 
ing, during which time no foreigner was ever attacked or injured, 
no white woman ever assaulted, and no legation ever violated save 
once — only a toppling shell of a government, which may crumble 
at any moment, remains. My appeal is for a definite declaration 
of intention as to these and the other republics, because there could 
be no more fitting time than this, when the United States is entering 
the world war for the avowed purpose of driving out despotism, 
crushing autocracy and upholding the rights of smaller nations, and 
because one is vitally needed, if we are to hold the full confidence 
and friendship of Latin America. 

What are we going to do to the smaller nations in the Carib- 
bean, whom we are one by one taking over, because their govern- 
mental methods and results do not appeal to us? Plainly, we are 
drifting there. Our influence is extending rapidly by the acts of 
both the dominating political parties, and yet nothing is being done 
by reason of a deliberate national consciousness or a declared policy. 
In neither of the last political platforms is there any statement of a 
belief that the United States should go on dehberately extending 
its influence in the Caribbean, or any reference whatever to Haiti 
and San Domingo. If this is manifest destiny, it is an extraordi- 
narily voiceless destiny. If it is an unconscious national drift, it 
has all the foreboding and the terrifying silence of an irresistible 
glacier. The American electorate has never voted upon it. It has 
alternately applauded the "taking" by force and trickery of Pan- 
ama and the violation of a treaty with a small nation with which we 
were at peace, and the Mobile speech of President Wilson, in which 
he declared to the sister repubHcs to the south of us that: 

"I want to take this occasion to say, too, that the United States 
will not again seek to secure one additional foot of territory by 
conquest." 

In his dealing with the sorely tried Republic of Mexico he nobly 
lived up to this doctrine, despite the bloody blunder of Vera Cruz. 
On the other hand, we have just witnessed the purchase of the 
Danish West Indies, at a fabulous price, "additional territory" to 
the south of us, without its calhng for any noteworthy comment in 
press or public or in Congress, either for or against the proposal. 
Forgotten is the wonderful fight made by Sumner in opposition to 



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The Republics of the Caribbean 3 

the treaty urged by President Grant for the annexation of San 
Domingo at the bargain price of $1,500,000 — the cost of islands 
having risen with the price of living. With Mr. Wilson the decid- 
ing argument for the purchase of the Danish Islands was reported to 
be the belief that, if we did not purchase them at once, Germany 
would — even in the midst of an overwhelming war — which recalls 
the fact that when Grant was balked of his desire to get hold of San 
Domingo, he declared: "If we abandon the project, I now firmly 
believe that a free port will be negotiated for by European nations 
in the Bay of Samana." 

President Grant made even more specific the spectre of foreign 
aggrandizement, which has done duty so often, together with the 
threat of a supposedly impending violation of the Monroe Doctrine, 
to take us a step farther along the highway imperialistic, by assert- 
ing to the Senate: "I have information which I believe reliable 
that a European power stands ready now to offer $2,000,000 for the 
possession of Samana Bay alone, if refused by us." But that was 
in 1870, and we had not yet reached that stage in our congressional 
development when it has apparently become a party duty to vote 
what the President asks, without regard to individual opinion or 
conscience, and so Sumner won on the merits of the argument, pre- 
cisely as Seward was beaten overwhelmingly in 1867, when he advo- 
cated the purchase of the Danish West Indies for $7,500,000. 

Times have changed; so we took over the administration of 
the San Domingan customs houses in 1907 by treaty, solely in order 
to get her out of debt and to prevent revolutions by safeguarding 
the customs-house receipts, which were the chief booty of the peri- 
odic revolters. At first it seemed to work well, but then revolutions 
began again and it was openly said that the trouble was that we 
had not taken for ourselves power enough. Next, a treaty was 
forced upon this unwilling people, by shutting off of their revenues, 
and thus compelling them to surrender to us their last shred of inde- 
pendence. When the government fell by reason of inanition, we 
placed a naval dictator in charge in the person of Captain Harry S. 
Knapp, who began his reign in the name of the American democ- 
racy by suppressing some of the native newspapers which criticised 
our acts and by installing a censorship all his own that forbade even 
the newspapers in the United States to receive a single word that 
was not edited by himself. This autocratic ruling lasted only until 



4 The Annals of the American Academy 

the press of this country laid the facts before Secretary Daniels when 
the order was promptly revoked. But the native newspapers, with 
one exception, the Listin Diario, having no one to speak for them 
in the seats of the mighty, are reported to have "stayed dead." 
Captain Knapps cabinet consists of naval officers and marine 
officers, and there is no congress, no free press, no effective force to 
hold him in check. Foreigners are gobbling up the best of the cane 
lands. 

In Haiti we have forced a convention on a free people by giving 
them their choice between a treaty surrendering to the United States 
the collection and disbursement of their customs receipts, and the 
creation and control of a constabulary. Having signed the conven- 
tion, we then imposed upon them a military occupation, having 
refrained from paying the interest on their foreign and domestic loans 
while using $95,000 a month of their income to pay the costs of our ^ 
occupation, which the Haitian people detest, particularly our rigid 
martial law. It is only just to say that this policy was entered upon 
by our State Department with real intent to be of service, because 
it felt that the country was in chaos and anarchy, and that the foreign 
bondholders, through their governments, would soon insist that either 
the United States should make order in the republic or let some out- 
sider do it. I am not here to impugn motives, but merely to record • 
facts, and the fact is that the government and the people of Haiti, 
who always paid the interest on their foreign loans, are now on the 
point of bankruptcy and their government is on the verge of being 
broken down by us, while the Washington authorities delay the 
payment of interest on all loans and the refunding of the total in- 
debtedness, which, despite years of revolution, is only $32,000,000. ^ 
They take pride, and justly so, that our marine officers have created 
a splendid gendarmerie of sixteen hundred men, have built and 
repaired a number of roads, and given the peasantry a sense of 
security which has not been theirs for years. If there was chaos, 
that is at an end, and there is that much clear gain. 

But granting, for the sake of argument, all that may be urged 
as to the necessity of our intervening in these two republics, what 
then? Are we sailing by any chart? What course have we laid 
out? Is there any definite governmental aim? If so, it has not been 
stated. Neither the Republican nor Democratic platforms of 1916, 
I repeat, made the slightest reference to either republic or our rela- 



The Republics of the Caribbean 5 

tions to them. Is there any social or educational survey of the 
republics on foot? None. Is there any recognition of the neces- 
sity of differentiating between the Haitians, who are French in cul- 
ture, and the San Dominigans, who are Spanish in culture? A pro- 
posal to send an American commission to Haiti privately financed 
was spurned a year ago by the State Department as likely to hurt 
the Haitian feelings if it should undertake a study of the underlying 
economic and social causes of the unrest of the past — those feelings, 
which, we are told, were in nowise disturbed when we forced the 
surrender treaty upon them! There is no definite national declara- 
tion as to how long we shall stay, how often we shall renew the 
treaties, or whether we shall ever let go. Neither President nor 
Congress has spoken on this point, nor as to whether we hitherto 
non-militaristic Americans should or should not govern these coun- 
tries by military oflScials. If they are to be militarily governed, 
then by what branch of the service? Porto Rico and the Philip- 
pines are under the War Department; the other nations in our tute- 
lage are under the navy. The Bureau of Insular Affairs is not 
yet trusted with the Virgin Islands; until the war permits a more 
leisurely arrangement, they are to be governed by an admiral on 
a makeshift basis. 

All question of a serious taking of stock is deferred. We shall 
not know just how much of industrial bankruptcy and depression 
and human backwardness we have purchased in the Virgin Islands 
until peace returns. And then? Then it will surely be time to 
exalt the whole question of the government of our permanent and 
temporary wards of whom the bulk of our people are so ignorant, 
to a position in which it shall have the attention it needs and de- 
serves. But how shall it be done? It is not merely a question of 
deciding whether the islands are to have military or civilian govern- 
ment; whether we shall not follow the example of England in Egypt 
in letting the natives carry on their own government under the 
oversight of a diplomatic agent-resident, in the manner of Cromer. 
It is not only a question of deciding whether Haiti and San Domingo 
are to be governed merely for the purpose of keeping order for a 
term of years and getting them out of debt, or even whether they 
are to be scientifically administered in order that their peoples shall 
really be trained in the art of self-government and be taught to 
walk, so that when we withdraw they shall not stumble and fall 



6 The Annals of the American Academy 

again. Far beyond this, first and foremost of all, is the question: 
What is it we have in our minds and hearts for them? Are we to 
be guided wholly by philanthropy, by the desire to help these small 
nations to an independent existence, as we are praying for inde- 
pendence after the war for Greece, Belgium and Serbia, or is their 
proximity to us, the wealth of their remarkable economic resources 
and their trade relationship to us, to give to our spectacles another 
hue as we look upon them? Shall the country remember what Mr. 
Wilson has said: " It is a very perilous thing to determine a foreign 
policy in the terms of material interest"? Shall the nation say with 
him: " Morality and not expediency is the thing that must guide us 
(in our relations with other nations), and we must never condone 
iniquity" — inquity even in our own attitude and policy? 

Shall the noble words of Wilson at Mobile apply only to con- 
quest in war, or shall we make them a similar self-denying ordinance 
against that form of conquest which has given us practically com- 
plete control of Haiti and San Domingo, happily with but little 
bloodshed, but a control none the less as complete as if we had let 
General Pershing march to Mexico City and let him take over the 
whole government of Mexico. Many Americans have been killed in 
Mexico and much American property damaged; no such charge lay 
against Haitians or San Dominigans. Is the dijEference in our policy 
towards them wholly due to their difference in extent of territory? 
Is there to be further intervention of this sort to the south of us, 
dependent upon haphazard act or as the result of a well-thought- 
out policy? Surely, we can all agree that the vital importance of 
these relationships, not only as to those directly affected, but in 
their very great effect upon our trade and poUtical relations with 
Central and South America, dictates that the administration of 
these wards should be in the hands of a Cabinet officer, and each 
dependency, temporary or permanent, represented as are Porto 
Rico and the Philippines by delegates to Congress. Perhaps it 
may be well, even, to estabhsh a House of Colonial Delegates, in 
order that their special problems may profit by mutual interchange 
of ideas and of experiences. 

Surely, some means must be devised for bringing the needs and 
desires of these very different peoples now under our care before the 
public, so that we shall not repeat in their case our nation's lamenta- 
ble record in the matter of our Indian ward«; so that, for instance. 



The Republics of the Caeibbean 7 

when an admiral-governor suppresses a book and all the native 
press because he does not like the contents thereof, it shall be possi- 
ble to get the facts before Congress, the government and the people. 
If such a one says, as one does today, that no native newspaper shall 
have any more right to criticize the American occupation of the 
island he controls than the Belgians have the right to criticize their 
cruel and overbearing conquerors, there should be some way of let- 
ting this be known outside the circles of officialdom, which are so 
apt to dismiss a question like this, even when it affects a funda- 
mental human liberty, one expressly guaranteed by the Constitu- 
tion of the United States, with a brusque: ''It serves the beggars 
right." 

In other words, the question before us is whether we are really 
going to set ourselves down to the task of governing well, according 
to the highest American tradition, these peoples who have no desire 
whatever to be governed by us and prefer to be governed poorly by 
themselves so long as they may have self-government and inde- 
pendence rather than be governed by outsiders whose culture and 
point of view in every fundamental thing are so alien. Shall we 
in the spirit of high humanity seek to establish with complete unsel- 
fishness, true democracy in these wonderful islands of Haiti and 
San Domingo, as against the autocracy of despotic or military con- 
trol? Shall we not live up to the words of President Wilson in his 
war message, that "the world must be made safe for democracy" — 
safe, let us hope he meant, even from Americans? Certainly, there 
could be no better program for our conduct in Haiti and San Do- 
mingo than the President's assertion with which I began this paper. 
It is of the utmost importance for our own standing before the world 
that the several departments of the government whose duty it is 
to carry out the details of our foreign policy should not only con- 
form to the high standards set by him, but should be still further 
committed to them by a detailed and definite promise registered in 
the eyes of all the world and before high Heaven itself. Any other 
course would surely give "aid and comfort" to the common enemy. 



